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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790773">tremble like you've seen a ghost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone'>okayantigone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>cry havoc [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Death Rites, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Force Ghosts, Gen, Mental Illness, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Semi Canon-Compliant, ben solo is not kylo ren and also ben solo deifnitely is kylo ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:40:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790773</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>rey has always been able to commune with the dead. on the crashed ships she excavated on jakku, she'd perform rudimentary death rites for the corpses of imperial soldiers she found there. eventually, the galaxy's dead start reaching out to her, begging her to ease them along. </p><p>among them is the ghost of one ben solo, murdered on the night kylo ren rose from the ashes his family's failures.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>cry havoc [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>tremble like you've seen a ghost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>tell me… have you heard the legend of ben solo, the bright? it’s not a story luke skywalker would tell you. you see a long time ago, in a system  far, far away…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>the monster kylo ren visits rey’s dreams often. his voice is deep and rumbling quiet through the vococoder of his mask. he never takes it off. she likes to play a game of imagining what he looks like beneath it. is he young and handsome? or is he an old man? is he even human, or perhaps some other species, that she may not have even heard of?</p><p> </p><p>he wants to be her teacher, this she knows, though she isn’t sure what she could possibly learn from him that luke can’t teach her.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>there was a young jedi in my school, by the name of kylo ren. he fell to the dark side, despite my best effort. one night, he rose up, and killed my nephew ben solo. he killed all my other students, and destroyed my school. and then he left. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>luke’s greatest failure, laid bare, and the death of han and leia’s son hanging over them all. she asks about ben sometimes, but it makes luke clam up, and disappear for days. how he manages that on an island small enough that she can walk around it in a day is beyond her, but she knows that it is not her place to ask. she is merely a branch grafted on to this family tree, and she knows that growing up in a desert does not bring about a great green thumb, so she knows her place and keeps quiet.</p><p> </p><p>she doesn’t tell luke about the dreams in which kylo ren visits her. she can usually see his surroundings. sitting in a meditative pose in a white empty room, or else looking out a viewpoint in what she presumes to be the officer’s lounge on his ship. sometimes she sees glimpses of him at the edge of his bed, as he is about to remove his mask. even in the dreams, he keeps it on, and hides his face.</p><p> </p><p>she’s seen his hands. they are human hands, pale and elegant, with long fingers, and calluses shaped after the handle of a lightsaber. he is a man, then, she thinks, but as soon as her skin touches his, he disappears, and the space where he sits is cold and it breaks her.</p><p> </p><p>the darkness in that cave calls to her night after night, but she will not fail luke the way kylo ren did. she refuses to be another disappointment, she refuses to be abandoned on another planet, when she falls, she will not falter. she is better than it.</p><p> </p><p>“you did not fail kylo ren,” she tells luke. she wants to stay here. she wants to learn. she wants it so desperately it feels like a fire at the very centre of her being, choking her up, as though her lungs can’t quite figure out how to perform their function. “he failed you.”</p><p> </p><p>she looks straight at luke, and hopes he reads in her eyes how badly she wants it. she looks straight through luke, at the shimmering spectre of kylo ren, and though she can’t see his face, the broad heavy line of his shoulders looks shattered.</p><p> </p><p>luke agrees to teach her.</p><p> </p><p>she continues to dream of kylo ren. some nights, he doesn’t speak at all, just sits on the floor of her hut, cross legged with his palms resting on his knees, and his saber by his side. she has the unnerving feeling he’s trying to watch over her, and protect her from something. but from what, when he’s the only thing she ever needed protection from, she can’t quite tell.</p><p> </p><p>she wonders if in keeping those strange dreams a secret, she’s betraying luke somehow, if she’s failing him like kylo ren did. the ghost of ben solo hangs heavy over everything luke does. the nephew he couldn’t save from the danger right beneath his nose. but she is determined. kylo ren won’t take another student from him, even if that student is her. she doesn’t pretend she’s as important. ben solo, the prince of the galaxy had been wanted and beloved by his family. his blood was the stuff that forged the stars. his mother was a princess, then a queen, then a general. his father was the most talented pilot of a starship the galaxy ever did see since vader, and vader was his grandfather, forged in the fires of mustafar, he who had done great things. terrible yes… but great. his grandmother was the queen of a people who still speak her name in prayer. what does rey have, to compare to that? she, who was only worth as much credits as her skinny arms could dig out and scavenge from the graveyards that imperial battleships had become?</p><p> </p><p>she’d seen them, in the deep bellies of those long-ago crashes. the men who had never quite made it off jakku, those who had conquered the stars, but could not die among them. for a time, the dead had been her only friends. she’d scavenged an admiral’s great white cloak, as it regulated temperature and was waterproof. he did not need it anymore. his skeleton crumpled on the floor. she put a hand on the delicate thin forehead of his cracked skull, the way she’d seen old women do for the dead in the village, and wished him a peaceful rest. she doubted anyone else had ever done that for these poor men. for weeks she kept coming back to the ship, and finding the dead, and wishing them a peaceful rest, as she took what she could off of them. she fancied herself the boatman from the legends.</p><p> </p><p>when you die, one of the old women had said – or maybe her mother had said, in a snatch of a memory – you face a man on a boat. he will row you across the river, to the kingdom of the dead beyond the stars, but you must pay him.</p><p> </p><p>“i have nothing,” rey had said, quietly devastated. “what do i do if i have nothing?”</p><p> </p><p>“then you stay here,” the old woman had said. “stuck. until someone else eases you along.”</p><p> </p><p>some of the other scavengers thought she was crazy for going as deep into the ships as she did. they were superstitious of the dead imperials that littered the depths. but these men has all fought for something they believed in, even a little bit, and no one was left to mourn them, and their empire was gone, and so were their names. and besides, the other scavengers had picked the upper levels of the wrecks clean, so what was she to do? starve?</p><p> </p><p>she’d gotten into a storm trooper sleeping quarter. most of them had been crushed still in their bunks. the empire had used clones, but they were still people, so she walked between them, and wished them a goodnight, and hoped they had not suffered much, hoped it had all been swift, and merciful.</p><p> </p><p>“that’s all you can pray for in this desert,” one of the old women had said. “that your death is swift and merciful.”</p><p> </p><p>she’d found a whole compartment of expired empire-era rations in that room, and she’d feasted like a queen for nearly two whole weeks, and she’d gone back to thank the dead storm troopers for their generosity. she’d brought them each a handful of glittering sand in gratitude.</p><p> </p><p>she hoped the boatman would take it, and let them pass. they must have been in this desert for so long. like her, they must have been so tired.</p><p> </p><p>she thinks about her dead imperials often, now that she’s on anch-to. now that she has access to the holonet, and reads stories about the empire, and its vile atrocities. she thinks about the admiral who’d given her his cloak. she’d spent a lifetime in the ruins of the great men who commanded the deaths of entire planets. she wonders how many of them unknowingly are the fathers and grandfathers of the zealous youths of the first order. she wonders if anyone had ever been kind enough to lay a handful of sand at the feet of finn’s dead comrades. life on jakku is like a wheel. some other skinny feral child wil find the remnands of the massacred village, and scavenge, and wish them safe passage to the other side, be it storm trooper, or peaceful villager.</p><p> </p><p>the cost of kylo ren’s rage, which they had all paid in equal measure.</p><p> </p><p>“do you ever think about the dead?” she asks once, while still caught in the dream that he is sitting in her hut, watching over her.</p><p> </p><p>“all the time,” he says in his quiet mechanical voice.</p><p> </p><p>“do you regret killing ben solo?” she asks. he shakes his head. she’d bet he couldn’t even pick ben’s face out of a line-up, if his life depended on it.</p><p> </p><p>“why did you do it?”</p><p> </p><p>“to get stronger,” he says simply. and then, with a sort of pain that filtered through the vococoder, but nevertheless pierced through her sternum, he said “to get away. to go home.”</p><p> </p><p>“do you even have a home?”</p><p> </p><p>he sounds impossibly sad when he says, “not anymore.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>tell me… have you heard the legend of ben solo, the bright? it’s not a story luke skywalker would tell you.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>it’s not, not really, because luke never speaks of his dead nephew. leia and han never speak of their dead son.</p><p> </p><p>there is no memorial for him – no statue or marker.</p><p> </p><p>force users leave no body. there had been nothing to bury, she understood. still, she wonders if they miss being able to mourn him physically.</p><p> </p><p>“my son isn’t dead,” leia had divulged one night. “he is among the stars.”</p><p> </p><p>rey thought it was a pretty story. the boatman must he so rich, for how much did e galactic prince have to offer him?</p><p> </p><p><em>ben solo was the son of leia organa and han solo, </em>that deep measured voice tells her. <em>he was a quiet and reserved child, but strong in the force like no other. he was sent to train under his uncle luke, and learn the jedi ways. but his power scared luke. luke skywalker was the son of vader, and he had a predisposition for the dark side, like his father before him. he stood to the temptation ardently. but ben solo’s powers grew, and his control of them lessened. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p><em>you see, there was always something wrong with ben, </em>his voice drops almost to a whisper. <em>a condition… a sickness, the kind that cannot be healed. he was disordered. it was a common condition, after the wars. those who witnessed the alderaanian disaster called it starfire shock. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>rey knows it well. he doesn’t need to explain it to her. there are scavengers on jakku who don’t want rations from unkar platt, just drink, and their eyes are huge, and blank and full of stars.  sometimes, when the wind is quiet at night, she could hear their screams rising high from their lodgings. the men who’d fought in the great civil war, on either side of it. one of them had dropped to his knees at the sight of an imperial ship, vomited his rations, and sobbed, and sobbed and sobbed, and someone had to carry him away, and rey never saw him again. they didn’t speak, and when they spoke it was in trepidation. they were dead, and didn’t know it yet, one of the old women told rey. their fear had robbed them of life.</p><p> </p><p>ben solo had never been in a war, but the fear inside him burned brighter than the death star’s beam when it fired. leia organa had carried that fear and rage in her, and given it to her son.</p><p> </p><p>he was called bright because of his skill and aptitude. but also, because at the time, anyone strong in the force, could recognize him by how brightly he broadcasted that fear. always, always, always, ben solo had been afraid of something out there.</p><p> </p><p><em>he used to wake up screaming, </em>kylo ren tells her, <em>it disturbed us all, until master luke moved him to his own quarters, where he could disturb no one but himself with his nightmares. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>did luke ever try to help him? she’d asked.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>of course he did. what do you take him for? he tried everything, and it wasn’t enough. and ben was at the end of his rope. i did him a kindness. i laid him to rest. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>rey’s eyes are full of unbidden tears that roll down her face.</p><p> </p><p>“you killed him,” she whispers, horrified. she’d known, rationally, that kylo ren had killed all of luke’s students. that he’d killed ben. but hearing it now, like this –</p><p> </p><p><em>ben was never going to get better, </em>kylo ren says, and sounds so, so mournful. she wonders if he’d been ben’s friend, if he’d loved ben. if his fall to the dark side had been nothing but a misguided attempt to fix the boy he loved, and in failing to fix him…</p><p> </p><p><em>i was with him to the last, </em>kylo ren says softly. <em>i held his hand until he slid into the force. i didn’t want him to be alone. </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>and then you ran, rey says.</p><p> </p><p><em>and then i ran, </em>kylo ren agrees, quietly.</p><p> </p><p>then he disappears from her floor, just as luke comes in, to find her crying. he sits next to her, at the edge of the bed, and extends his metal arm to her, and pulls her to his broad chest, and lets her cry into his robes. he rubs circles on her back, and she only cried harder. she wonders if he did this for ben, when he woke screaming from his nightmares.</p><p> </p><p>“i dreamt of ben,” she says, by way of explanation, and wonders when did lying become so easy to her. wonders if she is, indeed, failing luke the way kylo ren failed him. wonders if ben solo ever told him the truth of his nightmares, or if he too, lied so as not to worry his uncle.</p><p> </p><p>he looks at her hard, with those pale blue eyes, so light they almost make him look blind, the same eyes as those of anakin skywalker in old holos. she wonders if when he died, vader had blue eyes, or gold. there is something impossible there, unreadable, and unreachable. how much of himself does luke skywalker keep locked away?</p><p> </p><p>“ben is just a ghost now,” luke says softly. “he can’t hurt anyone anymore. just himself.”</p><p> </p><p>the way he says it, so final and hard – it startles her. “what do you mean?”</p><p> </p><p>“just that – “ luke breathes in deeply. “i loved ben very much,” he says softly. “he was my nephew, my sister’s son. i was raised by my uncle, you understand so it was – it was important to me. to do right by him, like owen did right by me. but ben was… a troubled boy.”</p><p> </p><p>“starfire shock,” rey whispers.</p><p> </p><p>luke’s eyes widen a fraction in surprise. “yes,” he intones slowly, nods, as if steeling himself. “among other things.”</p><p> </p><p>he runs his flesh hand over his face.</p><p> </p><p>“he was so afraid all the time,” luke whispers. “it broke his mother’s heart. broke my heart. but fear… leads to anger. and anger leads…”<br/>
<br/>
“to the dark side,” rey finishes suddenly, in plain understanding. “he was beginning to turn.”</p><p> </p><p>“yes. and i tried to help him. we all did. we wanted to. we thought he’d get better.”</p><p> </p><p>“but then kylo ren rose,” rey finishes for him.</p><p> </p><p>“yes. and now we’ll never find out. ben… lashed out, sometimes. in anger, and in fear. when he couldn’t take it anymore. he broke things. and people. he hurt himself.”</p><p> </p><p><em>i laid him to rest, </em>kylo ren’s voice echoes in her mind. she wonders if that had been the kindest he could be to his friend. a damaged lost boy, who needed someone to control him. the stories luke told of kylo seemed to fit in with that – a razor-sharp, ambitious creature from the start. full of nothing but fire and determination. no tolerance for weakness, least of all his own.</p><p> </p><p>his turn had been sudden, but unsurprising.</p><p> </p><p>she tries to reconstruct in her mind, ren’s turn to the darkside. those final weeks. maybe the two of them had planned to leave together. to burn everything down, and go. but at the last minute, ren had realized that ben would only hold him back, and so he’d struck his friend down, and then slaughtered everyone and left.</p><p> </p><p>that night, as she falls into sleep, it’s not kylo ren she dreams of. she knows instinctively that it’s ben solo. he has a handsome broad smile, and warm brown eyes, hia hair a long mess of untamed curls. he wears flowing white jedi robes.</p><p> </p><p>“you’re dead,” rey tells dream-ben dumbly.</p><p> </p><p>“you’re the first one to notice,” says ben cryptically. he has a soft full mouth. if he were alive, she’d dream of kissing it.</p><p> </p><p>“what happened to you, ben solo?” she asks.</p><p> </p><p>he looks down, to the left, then at her, but only slightly.</p><p> </p><p>“i died,” he says simply. “it was my time.”</p><p> </p><p>“but you’re still here,” she notes. “wherever here is.”</p><p> </p><p>“i’m one with the force,” ben says. “we tend to stick around. you will too, if you die.”</p><p> </p><p>“if?”</p><p> </p><p>“some force users are immortal. have you heard the legend of darth plagueis the wise? it’s not a story luke skywalker would tell you – “<br/>
<br/>
“i have had it up to <em>here </em>with stories luke skywalker wouldn’t tell me!” rey snaps. “i want to know what happened to you, and to luke’s temple, and to kylo ren. i want to know why he killed you, and why luke hid away, and why you died. i want to know- “<br/>
<br/>
“you want to know a whole awful lot,” ben solo says softly. he looks young, and sad. she wants to reach out and comfort him.</p><p> </p><p>no one had ever wanted to know what happened to ben solo until he put on the mask.</p><p> </p><p>“ask kylo ren why he wears his mask,” ben solo says, softly. “ask him who disfigured him. i bet he’ll tell you.”</p><p> </p><p>“why don’t you tell me?” rey knows she sounds childish and petulant. she thought coming to luke would give her answers, a way to make sense of everything.</p><p> </p><p>“it’s not my secret to tell,” ben says softly. “well. that’s a lie. it is. but i think you’ll take it better coming from him, than anyone else.”</p><p> </p><p>“okay.”</p><p> </p><p>“rey… if you want so badly to know what happened… go back to the ruins of luke’s school. kylo ren will be there. he’ll wait for you.”</p><p> </p><p>“why?” she asks. that’s all she seems to know these days. why now, why her, why all of these people?</p><p> </p><p>“because you need a teacher,” ben says.</p><p> </p><p>“is kylo ren going to teach me?”</p><p> </p><p>“no,” ben laughs. “kylo ren is a punk bitch.”</p><p> </p><p>it startles a laugh out of rey too.</p><p> </p><p>“kylo … is broken,” ben says softly. “and he couldn’t teach anyone anything. he won’t save you. he can’t even save himself.”</p><p> </p><p>“he tried to save you,” rey says quietly. “at least… i think that’s what he was trying to do.”</p><p> </p><p>“yes, he was. he failed, but… at least he tried. for that… i’ll always be grateful to him. there were days… at the end… where it felt like he was the only one at my side. but he couldn’t help me. so he laid me to rest.”</p><p> </p><p>he closes his eyes. he looks peaceful and serene, as though his death at the hands of ren was something truly inevitable, and he’s made his peace with it.</p><p> </p><p>“you should go now,” ben says softly. “please… rey … please save kylo ren.”</p><p> </p><p>she wonders how much they must have loved each other, when she wakes up to her tear-stained pillow. kylo and ben, alone in the galaxy, and falling to a force they couldn’t understand.</p><p> </p><p>she leaves the island without telling luke, but she thinks he must know anyway, the way in which he seems to know everything. she finds her way back to tokadana, the greenest planet in the galaxy, with the most trees in the whole world. it’s beautiful, even if the dirt is now soaked with blood.</p><p> </p><p>“the dirt here has always been soaked with blood,” maz says, and rey shrieks, and jumps what must be ten feet in the air. maz laughs at her. rey cracks a smile.</p><p> </p><p>maz tells her about the jedi and sith who once sliced at each other on this very ground.</p><p> </p><p>“worse things have happened, than some property damage, in this life,” maz says gently, and leads rey inside. the castle is being rebuilt, slowly, but surely.</p><p> </p><p>maz serves them both tea.</p><p> </p><p>“the jedi training not to your taste?” she asks gently. rey shakes her head. it was. of course it was. it was everyone’s dream, to train as a jedi under luke skywlker. but she has something more pressing now, something that calls to her, as surely as the dark side does, as surely as the legacy lightsaber had.</p><p> </p><p>“he came here once, you know,” maz says.</p><p> </p><p>“luke?”<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>“no. his father. back then, he was still named anakin, and he was still a jedi. he was the brightest thing in the room,” she laughs a little as she says it. rey wonders how many great loves can such a tiny woman fit into her heart. “he had an easy laugh, and he walked in like he owned the place. ben kenobi – his master – walked behind him, went straight from the bar, and downed ten whole shots of green rakija.”</p><p> </p><p>“he must have been insufferable.”</p><p> </p><p>“it’s where his children get it from. and his grandson.”</p><p> </p><p>“what happened to ben solo?” rey asks.</p><p> </p><p>maz takes in a deep breath. “you know how he died?” maz asks.</p><p> </p><p>no one had ever cared about what happened to ben solo. not before, and certainly not after. they’d stopped here, on their way to leave him with luke. senator organa, resplendent in her white robes, with her hair braided intricately, and han solo, handsome and irreverent as ever, and chewie, her tall beautiful boy. and little ben. he was almost as tall as chewie already, and just starting to fill out into his height, but he felt little to her, so, so impossibly small. his dark eyes almost swallowed up all the light in the room, as he looked around, darting glances from one end to the other. the same eyes on different people, she’d seen throughout her life. ben solo’s eyes stayed with her, because he looked like he held all the pain in the universe.</p><p> </p><p>“i don’t want to go,” he’d told her miserably over the broth she served him. leia and han were in the basement, depositing items into her archive that were too painful to keep. “they’re sending me away, because they don’t know how to fix me.”</p><p> </p><p>there was no fixing him, maz could have told them that. maybe, if he were loved and cherished, he’d learn to live with his pain, but no more. she’d looked into his eyes, and seen a galaxy of stars reflected in there, and she’d known – ben solo was never coming back.</p><p> </p><p>no one had cared about what happened to him until he put on that mask.</p><p> </p><p>“kylo ren killed him,” rey says confidently. ah. luke’s favored half-truth. a lie to be swallowed whole by the galaxy. ben really had grasped his grandfather’s legacy – to be known at once, as victimizer and victim. kylo ren killed ben solo. darth vader killed anakin skywalker. but luke was the one who’d led them both to their deaths.</p><p> </p><p>“if you know,” maz says, “then where are you going?”</p><p> </p><p>“ben came to me,” rey says, startling her. “he came to me in a dream. and he … he told me to go and save kylo ren. so i guess that’s what i’m going to do.”</p><p> </p><p><em>save kylo ren, </em>maz thinks. what a strange and wonderful thought. no one had cared about saving kylo ren before. and maybe it was time to put him to rest. alongside ben.</p><p> </p><p>“you need the coordinates to luke’s old school,” maz deduces. “where kylo killed ben.”</p><p> </p><p>“ben said kylo would wait for me there,” rey says, confidently.</p><p> </p><p>“you poor, abandoned child,” maz whispers, more to herself, than anything. kylo en had been waiting his whole life. so had rey, and her eyes too, are full of the stars, that she looked up to, waiting for a mother that would never come back.</p><p> </p><p>oh, maz and the rebellion had never gotten along, after ben’s death.</p><p> </p><p>she watches rey’s ship become a dot in the horizon as she jumps to hyperspace, with a bag full of bread, and a map to ben solo’s empty grave.</p><p> </p><p>maz had looked at his reatreating back, as he dragged his feet behind his brave parents. their light had always eclipsed him, and he cast a long, lonely shadow, like his grandfather had, when standing next to obi wan.</p><p> </p><p>“you keep an eye on that boy,” she’d told chewie sternly. “make sure they don’t forget about him. make sure they go back for him.”</p><p> </p><p>but no one had gone back for ben solo.</p><p> </p><p>she walks back into the ruins of her home, with halting steps.</p><p> </p><p>no one had gone back for ben solo, but maybe rey would save kylo ren.</p><p> </p><p>she lands gracelessly, the belly of her ship making a loud noise into the grass. the planet is familiar, because it has the same colors of jakku. the trees are tall and orange, and the grass is yellow and dry. it must be this world’s version of a bitter autumn. the sun is rising, a lone star disappearing in the horizon. she looks around, and feels into the force, the shroud of death that surrounds this place.</p><p> </p><p>death, and so much grief. too much by far. she wonders if anyone had come back for ben solo, even if he had nothing to leave. she likes to imagine that leia would have picked through the debris for some semblance of his belongings to take home. she knows she didn’t. leia had nothing from her burned homeplanet, but grief and anger. why should it be different with her son?</p><p> </p><p><em>here i am</em>, she thinks pointedly at kylo ren. <em>here i am, because you called for me. here i am, because ben asked me to save you. </em></p><p> </p><p>she stares at the charred remnants of luke’s academy, his life-work reduced to cinders. she wonders about the children he taught, all of them signing off their brilliant potential to the promise of luke skywalker’s legend. none of them had walked out of there alive.</p><p> </p><p>“follow me,” kylo ren says, “i’ll show you.”</p><p> </p><p>standing there now, he looks no less ephemeral than he does in her dreams, a creature swathed in black and mystery and sorrow. she wonders how anyone who’s ever seen him could have missed it before. kylo ren carries tragedy on his shoulders like a shroud, a sadness that permeates the very air around him. she wonders if he misses ben.</p><p> </p><p>“of course i do,” he says softly.</p><p> </p><p>she follows him as he deftly picks his way through the thicket, his feet barely leaving indents in the mossy ground.</p><p> </p><p>“this is where it happened,” he says quietly, gesturing at the collapsed stone hut.</p><p> </p><p>“this is where you – “she needs the confirmation but she can’t even say it out loud.</p><p> </p><p>“where ben died. yes.”</p><p> </p><p>she stands at the pile of stones, and breathes in the tragedy. “did no one – “</p><p> </p><p>did no one come back for him?</p><p> </p><p>she already knows the answer. force users don’t leave a body behind. why would any of them have come back, to be reminded of the suffering.</p><p> </p><p>she feels a grief so powerful it could choke her, and she drops to her knees in the dirt. how many times had ben solo dropped to his knees, beating his fists into the ground, begging for guidance with the light quiet and oppressive around him.</p><p> </p><p>“what happened to you?” she asks softly, staring up at kylo ren’s back, as he stands at the blocked off doorway to ben’s quarters. “why do you wear the mask?”</p><p> </p><p>he just shakes his head. she’s not sure how long she kneels in the moss, breathing in the years of desperation ben had soaked into the place. he’d stood there and looked out to the sky, and waited for his parents to come back for him. hadn’t they all?</p><p> </p><p>ben. kylo. rey.</p><p> </p><p>they were all children someone had abandoned somewhere, and they had not gotten better, and no one had come back for them. but something about the tragedy of ben solo did not sit right with her, and someone somewhere was not being honest. and she wanted, desperately, to know what had happened ten years ago.</p><p> </p><p>she finally stands up. ren is waiting for her. he looks to be half-melted into the darkness of the night. she raises her hand, and lifts the stones, and they hover. a reconstruction of the crime.</p><p> </p><p>“who brought the house down?” she asks softly.</p><p> </p><p>“it was me,” says ren, and his voice sounds strange through the vococoder.</p><p> </p><p>“and how long were you trapped under the rubble?” she asks.</p><p> </p><p>the stones had fallen down, merciless. the blood, and the scratches on them revelead the missing piece of the puzzle.</p><p> </p><p>“why do you wear the mask?” she asks. the force fills her with the knowledge anyway, as she walks through the ruins of the room where ben solo spent his solitary days, and woke up in the night, screaming out his terror.</p><p> </p><p>“you know why,” says ben solo through the vococoder.</p><p> </p><p>yes. she knows. a part of her has always known, since the first time she heard luke lie about it. the tragedy of ben solo, the bright, who died choking on his own blood in a mountain of rubble of his own making.</p><p> </p><p>when kylo ren reaches up to remove the mask, she knows what she’ll see, but she’s still not ready, for the disfigured sight of his bashed in skull.</p><p> </p><p>his eyes are full of the devastating fire of that night.</p><p> </p><p>luke had come in to confront him. to do away with him. to fix him in the only way he knew how darkness would be fixed – the way it had been fixed in his father. an unkind, permanent redemption.</p><p> </p><p>ben was a restless sleeper, his starfire shock bringing him nightmares. he’d woken as he usually did, and he’d seen his uncle standing over him, saber ignited. he’d reached for his own weapon. he’d brought the house down on them in his desperation, knowing he’d be no match for the jedi hero. but the stonework had crushed him too. ben solo had died that night, leaving no body to be buried. he’d slid into the force with ardent desperation, having nothing to offer to the boatman but his inheritance of grief.</p><p> </p><p>luke had been there. had witnessed, and felt it. had known. and he’d kept his horrible secret. there was no body to prove the lie. and kylo ren, masked and vengeful rampaged through the galaxy with merciless brutality.</p><p> </p><p>just a child throwing a tantrum.</p><p> </p><p>“the dead speak to each other,” kylo ren, who has always been ben solo, says to her. his mouth doesn’t move. his face is too destroyed to move. he should have been dead so long ago. “i head storied about you from them. you brought them sand.”</p><p> </p><p>she knows she’s crying. she’d always cried for her sad, imperial dead. how many armies had she sent to the underworld?</p><p> </p><p>“is that why you came to jakku?” she asks softly. no one had come to wish ben solo goodbye, because of the enormity of luke’s lie.</p><p> </p><p>“i’m tired,” he says, and sits at the edge of the crushed pallet, and rests his arms on his kness. she can make out the place where the blood leaked out of his smashed skull.</p><p> </p><p>she sits down beside him, and they look down at the floor in unison.</p><p> </p><p>“do you think he really thought you got away?” she asks, hopefully.</p><p> </p><p>he cocks his head to the side, and turns his ruined face at her.</p><p> </p><p>“we were trapped in the rubble for hours. he must have heard me scrambling to get out. he must have heard me go silent.”</p><p> </p><p>“were you really going to?” she asks, after another bout of silence between them.<br/>
<br/>
“what?”</p><p> </p><p>“turn,” she says. “to the dark side?”</p><p> </p><p>ben shrugs again. “i don’t know. maybe. i died before i could make up my mind.”</p><p> </p><p>even without the ruin of the damage, his smile would have been lopsided.</p><p> </p><p>“i wish they’d come back,” he says, wistfully. “they’d have known. if only they’d come back.”</p><p> </p><p>unburied, and unmourned, and very much dead, that was the tragedy of ben solo. rey wonders how to break to leia the news that he never survived. he’d been so alone for so long. there was only so much that snoke could do to sustain him. a ghost of a ghost.</p><p> </p><p><em>would you like to go</em>?</p><p> </p><p>he doesn’t look at her, but his shoulders slump, exhausted.</p><p> </p><p>“i’ve always wanted to leave here. all i wanted was to leave here.”</p><p> </p><p>when he’d stood amidst the rubble, and taken his first bloodless breath, taken in the sight of his arms, bruised and wracked with breaks, he had not yet known what had happened, only that the anger had blinded him, and he’d summoned up all he had. he’d made it rain fire. on the school, on the padawans who pretended not to hear his screaming, on the lonely grassy grounds, and on luke.</p><p> </p><p>maz is where he’d gone to first. maz was infinitely older than him, and she’d know what to do. he needed it – the guidance. the help. needed someone to take him by the hand, and tell him what to do. snoke had always urged him, quietly, gently nudging him along a worthy path. ben had stood in maz’s bedroom, looming, awkwardly tall, and when she’d grappled for the light to illuminate his face, she’s screamed.</p><p> </p><p>he’d held his hands up. “maz, maz – it’s me, it’s ben solo,” he’d said, and she’d stared at him horrified in a way he’d never seen.</p><p> </p><p>“please, maz,” he’d said. “something terrible has happened, but no one else would ever believe me.”</p><p> </p><p>his eyes were full of stars when he’d looked at her, and then the light had drained. “oh, you poor, murdered boy,” she’d said, with so much infinite grace and pity in her voice.</p><p> </p><p>he’d seen his reflection then, in her eyes. he’d seen what she saw, just as her comm link activated, to let her know from a distraught luke that ben had <em>ran. </em>ben had <em>killed </em>everyone and <em>ran. </em></p><p>“ben,” she’d said softly, slowly, as though speaking to one much younger than he. “how did you come here?”</p><p> </p><p>and he hadn’t wanted to believe then what he knew to be true. “i ran away.”</p><p> </p><p>“ben,” she’d said, and teached with her small hand for the wreckage of the once-beautiful boy. “you never made it off-planet, my boy.”</p><p> </p><p>the ghost in her room is nothing but a lost child. he hadn’t wanted to go, and she’d warned them to come back for him.</p><p> </p><p>“well there’s nothing to be done about it, then,” she’d said, matter of fact as you please. “come along now.”</p><p> </p><p>he’d followed her, his feet not quite touching the stone work. she guided him to the basement, and helped him pick out a cloak and a mask, to hide the deformity of his face.</p><p> </p><p>“what will you do now?” she’d asked curiously.</p><p> </p><p>but he’d merely stared at her, from behind the blackened visor, and melted away. the enormity of luke skywalker’s lie clung to her from that night onward. by not saying anything, she’d become an accomplice, and ben solo had <em>died, </em>and went unmourned and unavenged.</p><p> </p><p>but he was also right. no one would have ever believed him.</p><p> </p><p>rey wonders what life would have been like if he’d survived that night.</p><p> </p><p>“much the same, i imagine,” the ghost says. “i’d have still gone to snoke. you have to understand… i had nowhere else to go, after that.”</p><p> </p><p>“would i have still dreamt of you?”</p><p> </p><p>“of course,” he says. she pictures the whole, glittering ben she’d seen in her one dream of him. alive, and so very present.</p><p> </p><p>“please,” ben says. “please will you just…” he pauses, looking for words. he can’t find them. he swings his legs up on the pallet, and lays down, laying his arms over his chest.</p><p> </p><p>he takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“i know luke didn’t mean any of it,” he says quietly. “but he still lied. he lied about a lot. so please just… just don’t forgive him, okay? just don’t… just don’t be on his side. not about this.”</p><p> </p><p>“i won’t,” she tells him, fiercely.</p><p> </p><p>“okay.” he says softly. “okay. then i’m ready.”<br/>
<br/>
she rests her hand on his bloody forehead. ten years. she tries to imagine it. wandering through the galaxy, fading in and out of existence. five million souls on hosnian prime will send him off to his sleep. fifty thousand war cadets from rey’s imperial dead will salute with their guns.</p><p> </p><p>she closes her eyes too, and wishes the prince of the stars a peaceful rest, and because she has nothing else to give him, no handful of sand for him to pay his way forward, she gives him her heart, and hopes it’s enough.</p><p> </p><p>with a sigh, and a whimper, ben solo quietly slides into the force at last, and the galaxy shudders.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i struggled with this story all day today, and it still feels weird and disjointed, but if i dont post it, i'll legitimately go nuts<br/>the reason ben and kylo are separate people is because a lot of vader's novels tend to have this... dissociation between darth vader and anakin skywalker, and vader thinking about them like they're different people - it's something kylo does in canon too, referring to ben as a separate entity from himself, so i wanted to play on that a little. </p><p>for anyone left confused, basically<br/>ben died int he rubble of the house he collapsed on top of himself and luke, because he didn't manage to get away. for a time, he didn't realize he was dead. luke felt ben become one with the force, but chose to lie about it. he told leia that ben had ran away, and chosen to join snoke and become kylo ren - something which ben's force ghost eventually did.<br/>the rest of the galaxy was told that the jedi apprentice kylo ren slaughtered luke's students - among them - prince ben solo. and because leia and han believed that ben was still alive, and trusted luke's word on it, they felt no need to check if the story is, indeed true.<br/>rey kept dreaming about kylo and ben - who are the same person - and eventually went to luke's old school, and performed death rites for ben, so he could pass at last.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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